English dub of DBZ: Budokai not available in some countries

[Super Saiyan Swagger]

Why was the English dub for Dragon Ball Z: Budokai not released in some English speaking countries? I live in Australia and the game was only in Japanese. Does anyone know why this was the case?

Hell, even with the HD remaster released a few years ago it still only included the original Japanese voices.

[VegettoEX]

Someone else with a more solid memory and proof can chime in, but I believe Sony had a mandate for a little bit that a localized game had to include dialog in addition to just the text, so JP voices + English text was no longer acceptable. The first Budokai came in before this (and had a different translation than the American release), but then it was centralized with Budokai 2 onward.

I could just be talking out of my butt there, but eh.

The HD Collection versions are the same split-development as they originally were, likely due to a combination of the censoring that had been included back then combined with "release the product exactly as it used to be or else people will complain that it's been changed".

[Super Saiyan Swagger]

Okay, that clears up a lot of my confusion. Thanks .

It still bugs the crap out of me that the English dub still wasn't present in the HD collection.

[NitroEX]

From what I have heard of the Budokai English dub I'm personally glad it wasn't in the PAL release. The japanese voices were on point in that game and I wouldn't play it any other way.

[mikezilla2]

i imported the US set for the very reasons stated by the OP

[Quebaz]

Someone else with a more solid memory and proof can chime in, but I believe Sony had a mandate for a little bit that a localized game had to include dialog in addition to just the text, so JP voices + English text was no longer acceptable. The first Budokai came in before this (and had a different translation than the American release), but then it was centralized with Budokai 2 onward.

I could just be talking out of my butt there, but eh.

The HD Collection versions are the same split-development as they originally were, likely due to a combination of the censoring that had been included back then combined with "release the product exactly as it used to be or else people will complain that it's been changed".

I do remember seeing something like thay yes, but it must have been for a very short while, the Saint Seiya games were localized with its JPN audio (with the first one including French audio as well) and Naruto Ultimate Ninja 5 was brought to Europe with subs-only as well, heck for a DBZ example the PAL version of Super DBZ was sub-only as well and that was just 4 years after the release of Budokai 1.

But yeah the PAL release of Budokai 1 is a mess, it has slower loading times then the NTSC one and also has censoring in the cutscenes, not to mention the weird subtitles.

[DoomieDoomie911]

I would absolutely love it if they released a sub-only version of the games in the United States. I can't stand having to deal with dubtitles.

[90sDBZ]

But yeah the PAL release of Budokai 1 is a mess, it has slower loading times then the NTSC one and also has censoring in the cutscenes, not to mention the weird subtitles.

This. The loading times on Duel Mode take literally 1 minute for each fight, unless you change the text to French, in which case it still takes around 30 seconds. Story Mode wasn't as bad but it could be pretty random in that it would sometimes load quickly and sometimes not.

Fortunately the HD version has super fast loading times, although they did make a few gameplay mistakes with the HD port in both the PAL and NTSC versions. For example, P+K no longer knocks your opponent into the air, causing fights to mostly stay on the ground. And the effects of certain other moves were altered, like Goku's PPP>P no longer being a natural combo. Also, hitting your opponent from behind causing them to turn around automatically and be able to block, effectively making it impractical to use the sidestep cancel setup to combo into Goku's Spirit Bomb and making it a very hard move to land in general.